{"id":19197,"date":"2013-12-04T22:45:35","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T22:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-abstract-painting-no\/"},"modified":"2018-12-05T20:12:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T03:12:46","slug":"blakegopnik-daily-pic-abstract-painting-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-abstract-painting-no\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-19197 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/blakegopnik-daily-pic-abstract-painting-no\/attachment\/19198\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" src=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxagm3G6911qdr6jto1_1280-100x100.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxagm3G6911qdr6jto1_1280-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxagm3G6911qdr6jto1_1280-500x500.jpg 500w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxagm3G6911qdr6jto1_1280-299x300.jpg 299w, https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/tumblr_mxagm3G6911qdr6jto1_1280.jpg 730w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/post\/69005014493\">blakegopnik<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>DAILY PIC:<\/strong> \u201cAbstract Painting, No. 34\u201d, from 1964, is the third of my week\u2019s worth of Pics devoted to the Black Paintings of Ad Reinhardt, now on view in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidzwirner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ARpressFINALOct30.pdf\" title=\"Ad Reinhardt at David Zwirner\">his centennial show at David Zwirner<\/a> in New York. Compared to the others in the series, this almost-blue painting is so garish you might even be able to make it out in digital reproduction.<\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s the thing: Reinhardt\u2019s paintings don\u2019t really work except in the flesh.\u00a0 This is <em>not<\/em>, as is usually said, because of their sensory subtlety \u2013 that\u2019s only part of the story. Although their extreme refinement can make them seem almost immaterial, these paintings need to assert a direct, true, historical connection to their maker that only an encounter with their original matter can guarantee.<\/p>\n<p>I recently argued <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/03\/opinion\/sunday\/in-praise-of-art-forgeries.html?_r=0\" title=\"Gopnik on forgery in the New York Times\">in the New York Times<\/a> that, in terms of sensory and semantic content, a forgery or copy can be as useful as an authentic work of art; since Reinhardt\u2019s abstractions are so pared-down, copies ought to be especially easy to make and should work as fine surrogates for the authentic pictures. There\u2019s so little there in a Black Painting, in the first place, that there\u2019s not all that much to get wrong in copying one. But I think that just because of their paring-down, the pictures are more than usually about the act of their making instead of any visual effect they produce. They get a lot of their meaning, that is, from being <a href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/post\/68807869899\" title=\"Gopnik on Ad Reinhardt\">the product of an absurd \u2013 or at least unlikely \u2013 act or gesture of one man<\/a>, at one watershed moment in history, who chose to produce <a href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/post\/68912825659\" title=\"Gopnik on hand-made Reinhardts\">hand-made objects<\/a> that barely register as any human\u2019s production. Only the originals have a true, if impalpable, connection to that man and that moment of making. Actually, it\u2019s the impalpable nature of that connection that demands an encounter with the original objects; the connection doesn\u2019t reside in any sensory features that could be captured in a copy.<\/p>\n<p>In making these pictures, Reinhardt is often billed as a kind of saintly figure, rejecting the world in a moment of such abnegation that it\u2019s almost spiritual. I don\u2019t much buy that reading of him (just look at his earthy cartoons!) but I think I sense where it comes from: The Black Paintings don\u2019t function so much as <em>images<\/em>, whose value comes from what they look like and show, but as <em>relics<\/em>, whose value comes from their contact with a particular person, and the presence of that person in them.\u00a0 The Black Paintings reveal their maker, acting at the moment of their making, the way a relic of the True Cross reveals and connects to Jesus at the moment of his crucifixion \u2013 and in both cases a copy, however accurate, can\u2019t make the connection that the original relic can.\u00a0 Also in both cases, the object may not have much in it to impress our eyes \u2013 yet it matters to us anyway. (<em>Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, \u00a92013 Estate of Ad Reinhardt\/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; courtesy David Zwirner, New York\/London)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit <a href=\"http:\/\/blakegopnik.com\/archive\">blakegopnik.com\/archive<\/a>. The Daily Pic can also be found at the bottom of the home page of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/newsmaker\/art-and-photography\" title=\"Art Beast\">thedailybeast.com<\/a> and on that site\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/art.html\" title=\"Art Beast at The Daily Beast\">Art Beast<\/a> page.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>blakegopnik: DAILY PIC: \u201cAbstract Painting, No. 34\u201d, from 1964, is the third of my week\u2019s worth of Pics devoted to the Black Paintings of Ad Reinhardt, now on view in his centennial show at David Zwirner in New York. Compared to the others in the series, this almost-blue painting is so garish you might even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-words","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-4ZD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19199,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19197\/revisions\/19199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}